


A Kindness

by virginie



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Community: lewis_challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginie/pseuds/virginie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lewis is chickening out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kindness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fluffyllama (Llama)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llama/gifts).



Lewis is chickening out.

Hathaway knows this. Failure tastes like ashes in his mouth.

 

They'd received a tip that a woman fitting Sarah Palmer's description had been seen a week previously along a quiet, wooded stretch of the Thames—just hours before her body was found in her empty flat. She'd been having an altercation with an unidentified older man.

They arrived at the perimeter of the site and waited while forensics swept the area. They'd hit nothing but dead ends in a week of investigating and Hathaway felt irritation thrumming under his skin. He raised an eyebrow at Lewis, and slunk off into the woods.

He hunched his shoulders against the cold and lit a cigarette. A minute later Lewis walked up to him, his face sharp with annoyance.

"It's a waste of time us being here. Nothing yet and I've just been told they could be hours more."

Hathaway pinched out his cigarette, and ostentatiously slipped the stub into the little tin box he carried.

"Ready, Sir."

Lewis gave him a sardonic look, but there was a hint of amusement behind it. They turned and trudged out towards the cars, in step with each other.

"You go and talk to that friend of hers again, Megan, see if we missed something. Find out if she knew anything about a connection with an older man. I'll check the father's alibi again."

Hathaway kicked aside a dead branch that lay across his path, and a woman's hand flicked up through a drift of rotting leaves. They froze. Then Lewis crouched and cleared away more of the leaves, revealing a decaying, mottled face.

At first he was himself, calm and professional, then he breathed in sharply, his skin greyed and he seemed to collapse, falling backwards. Hathaway went down on one knee to catch him, wrapped an arm around his chest, and shouted for help.

Lewis surfaced again moments later, the colour abruptly returning to his face. He brushed off Hathaway's supporting arm and stood up, just as feet thudded through the trees towards them.

"I'm all right lad. I'm all right, leave me be," he said quietly. A squeeze of Hathaway's shoulder; then release.

Completely himself, Lewis started barking out commands. The body was cordoned off and Hathaway helped to his feet and shoved firmly out of the way. He'd been unable to move on his own, down on his knees, bereft of Lewis's warmth, his heart banging like a drum.

 

Hours later they got confirmation that the dead woman was Isobel Saunders, a philosophy major whose single known connection to Sarah Palmer was a tutorial and a Professor. Isobel had withdrawn a month earlier, intending to go travelling. She'd packed up her room, had a farewell party, and given her furniture and books away. Believing her gone, and knowing her tendency for adventure and erratic communication, her friends had simply expected her to turn up one day with a new boyfriend, or send them a postcard from a kibbutz, or an Australian cattle station. The killer must have intercepted her on the way to the airport.

Lewis had Gurdip look into the current whereabouts of all Professor Watkin's ex-students. Three more names surfaced over a span of 14 years, all women, and all missing since they'd left Oxford. That made five in total with three bodies still unaccounted for. It looked like Watkin had been murdering his students under the noses of the Oxford police for years.

 

The sun set over the outdoor courtyard at the pub, and darkness crept in around them.

Hathaway was several pints in, but still weighed down by the sick feeling he'd had all day. It wasn't only Lewis's uncharacteristic reaction to Isobel's body, or even the fact it was Lewis drinking the lemon and tonics for a change, it was that he'd played bad cop in the interrogation—something they almost never resorted to. Seeing Lewis's kind face strained in anger and distaste, hearing the disgust in his voice as he shouted at Watkin, Hathaway had felt a quickening in his body. _Yes,_ he'd thought, _it's this too that I love._ It hadn't been strategy; Lewis was almost out of control. It'd worked though. He'd bodily pulled Lewis out after an hour, leaving Watkin to stew, and then he'd gone back in alone with a sandwich and coffee. The confessions had rolled right off Watkin's tongue.

Nothing was right, everything was wrong. Maybe Lewis had been thinking. Maybe he'd realised Hathaway was broken, defective, unworthy of saving. Maybe he wanted something normal, respectable. Maybe he'd made a decision. Hathaway watched Lewis across their usual table, searching his familiar face for clues, waiting for the blow to come.

Everything was quiet, muted by trees and water. The moment when Lewis could have noticed Hathaway yawning and sent him home alone without further comment had passed. The moment when Hathaway could have postponed whatever terrible words Lewis was turning over in his mind, have jokingly implied that he had a life and needed to get to it—a party, friends waiting for him—had also passed.

They'd lapsed into silence, Hathaway clinging to a fading hope that this bad feeling was all in his head. Then he was suddenly too tense, too drunk, too frightened to hold out any longer. He put it to the test.

"Sir?"

Lewis met his eyes, his face tired and drained.

"Come back to mine?"

There was no answering warmth in Lewis's eyes, none of his usual fond embarrassment at Hathaway's brazen approach. He was stony, buried in Hathaway's shadow where he blocked the light spilling from the windows of the pub.

Hathaway reached out and touched the back of Lewis's hand, cold and dry as it curled around his glass. He tried to put some cheer into his expression, to banish the heavy feeling in the air.

"Come back to mine, Sir." A statement now, a smiling demand. If Lewis said yes then nothing would change, his uncharacteristic behaviour would mean nothing—not his collapse in the woods, not his rage at Watkin—it would be nothing to do with them.

When Lewis finally spoke his voice was colourless.

"Hathaway."

"No." James half stood as he said it. "No, Sir. Don't you dare—"

"Sit down, lad." It was an order.

Hathaway sat, reaching across the table and taking Lewis's hand into his own, cradling it in the shadows between them.

He pleaded, softly, shamelessly. "No. I won't allow it."

Lewis drew his hand gently away.

"Lyn rang me, yesterday, before this train wreck. I couldn't tell her about us. It's the third time we've spoken since you and I... I've tried to tell her every time."

Hathaway starts to speak but Lewis holds up a hand.

"What do I say?—I loved your mother, Lyn, but now I'm sleeping with Hathaway, half me age!"

Hathaway breathes again. It's not over. "I don't need you to tell her, Sir."

"There, lad. You know that won't do." Lewis's voice is kind, but his face is still stony, implacable.

"It will do. It will do." Hathaway is on the verge of something, desperate, he feels his face tighten and he wants to stand up and walk away. He wants to be alone. He wants to be alone with Lewis and make him see.

"I can be with you in private, James, but not in public. I can't change me life. I'm too old and set in me ways. And you're worth more than lies and pretence. I won't ask it of you."

Hathaway flinches away from him, and this time it's Lewis who reaches out, Lewis who takes his hand.

"You're shaking," Lewis says. Hathaway is, his whole body is shaking. "Let's get you home."

Lewis stands up and comes around the table. He puts his arm around Hathaway's chest, pulling him up and supporting him, an exact mirror of Hathaway's action that morning.

"You don't have to tell anyone, Sir. I don't care." Now his teeth are chattering.

"Not ever, James? I won't do that to you."

The back door of the pub opens behind them and a couple comes out, laughing and talking and settling into a table a few yards away. Hathaway barely registers, all his focus is on Lewis warm against him, holding him.

"Come back to mine. Take me home."

"I will, lad. But that's all. For a while there I really thought I had it in me to do this with you, but I don't, I can't. I'm sorry, James. "

Hathaway ignores the words as they walk around the side of the pub and exit through the gate. Lewis gets him to his car, asks for the keys. He gently settles Hathaway in the passenger seat and drives them carefully home.

Hathaway opens the window, letting the wind calm him down. He formulates his arguments, marshals his answers. He reaches across and rests his hand on Lewis's strong thigh, feeling it flex as he brakes for a red light.

Waiting at the lights Lewis looks over at him, and Hathaway thinks he sees a weakening, the return of fondness in his eyes. He thinks if he can just make Lewis lose control again, make him gasp and lose himself, then he'll forget all this, forget this madness.

His blood runs hot and cold, just thinking about it.

Lewis pulls up on the street and parks. He switches off the engine. The look in his eyes is clear now. This wasn't easy for him. This has cost him dearly.

Angry with himself, Hathaway withdraws his hand from Lewis's thigh. He gets out of the car and closes the door. He leans down, resting a hand on the roof, and meets Lewis's eyes. He forces himself to smile, to acquiesce, to lift the weight of this decision off Lewis's shoulders and share in his burden. _Love is kindness._

"Goodnight, Sir."

 

Inside the house, Hathaway leans back against his closed front door. He relives the moment, weeks ago now, when Lewis had lost himself in Hathaway for the first time. The clumsy kisses, the stumble down the dark hallway, the awkward moment when they'd both looked at the wreck of Hathaway's unmade bed and understood what was happening.

He drinks a glass of water in the kitchen and sleeps on the couch.

 

Two months later Lewis comes into work late. He looks rumpled and tired. He's looked this way since Watkin, and it hurts Hathaway badly to limit his concern to that of a friend and DS.

They've tiptoed around each other—both trying too hard, both pretending they're not trying at all. It's been awkward and intense, but Hathaway can feel the ease of their long-time partnership returning. He tells himself it's a relief.

He jauntily passes Lewis a coffee, fresh and only slightly cooler than when he'd bought it. Lewis sets it down on the desk.

"Take a walk with me, Hathaway?"

Hathaway's heart lurches. "Sir?"

"Just take a walk. Now."

Lewis leads the way into the parking lot and Hathaway follows. He lights a cigarette, cupping his hands around the flame, and inhales deeply.

Lewis takes a deep breath and leans his body back against the brick wall in the sun, closing his eyes. The lines on his face look deep in the clear morning light.

"I told our Lyn last night."

Hathaway stares at him, hope flooding his body. Lewis opens his eyes, and they're filled with pain and love.  

"She didn't take it well, at first. She was shocked. She drove down first thing this morning."

Hathaway yearns to touch him, but doesn't, not in the parking lot.

Lewis turns his palms flat to the wall on either side of his body. The gesture leaves him open to Hathaway, vulnerable. "She'll be all right I think, it's just a big change. She's probably filling me freezer with casseroles as we speak."

Hathaway nods tightly, his body inclined towards Lewis, waiting—

"I missed you, lad."

—and Hathaway breathes again, has to duck his head to hide his face. Then he looks up, meets Lewis's eyes, and let's him see what's there for the taking.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fluffyllama in the [Lewis Secret Santa Exchange 2012. ](http://lewis-challenge.livejournal.com/44617.html) This is my first Lewis story and hopefully won't be my last!


End file.
